One Nation's old guard and new blood canvass votes in party heartland of Ipswich

By Tony Moore

November 13, 2017 — 12.26am

Why it matters

One Nation must win Lockyer, not simply influence outcomes, if it is to hold the balance of power in the 93-seat Queensland parliament.

However preferences may push it to the LNP.

One Nation needs both its "old guard" and candidates who were in primary school when the party was established if it is going to hold the balance of power in Queensland.

The right-wing, nationalist party needs to win the LNP-held Lockyer (0.2 per cent margin) and the Labor-held Ipswich West (9.1 per cent margin) to prove it has support in 2017 like it did in 1998. And state leader Steve Dickson needs to win Buderim.

Labor's seat of Ipswich (16 per cent) appears out of reach, although it is being contested by One Nation's Malcolm Roberts, after the former senator and dual citizen was found ineligible to sit in federal parliament.

One Nation's candidate in Lockyer is Jim Savage, a 61-year-old businessman who has run his own dairy and worked in the shipping industry in Papua New Guinea, before returning to Queensland to run a pecan nut plantation and a cattle property.

The veteran: One Nation's Lockyer candidate Jim Savage, whom the party hopes can succeed.

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He has served on One Nation’s state executive for 15 years.

“One should never be overconfident, but we’ve done the hard work," he said.

"And I do believe people want a change,” Mr Savage told Channel Seven after declining to return calls from Fairfax.

Lockyer could be called One Nation heartland.

It was won by One Nation's Peter Prenzler in 1998 and then Bill Flynn in 2001, who ran for One Nation after Mr Prenzler defected to the City Country Alliance while in office.

Pauline Hanson herself pushed the LNP's Ian Rickuss right to the wire in 2015. Mr Rickuss ended up taking the seat with a 0.2 per cent margin, with just over 140 votes.

“My opponent is well known in this area and I’m relatively new here,” he said.

"But I’d like to think that people think a new broom sweeps cleanest.”

He also shrugged off stories he could be One Nation's Queensland leader if former LNP minister Mr Dickson loses in Buderim.

“That’s not for me to say,” he said.

“I think Steve (Dickson) will get in.”

He is backing a plan to build a new cannery in Grantham and said One Nation would put forward $30 million towards the $100 million private-sector project, which has struggled to win government or bank support. He will also try to bring water from the region's dams to Lockyer Valley farmers.

Mr McDonald believed poor roads and electricity bills would decide how people voted.

He said the media had exaggerated the impact One Nation would have in the 2017 Queensland election.

“The seat of Lockyer will be an important seat – as are all of the seats across the state," Cr McDonald said.

"But the journalists got it wrong in Western Australia and I think they have got it wrong in Queensland,” he said referring to predictions One Nation could win several seats in Western Australia and hold the balance of power.

“I think the point is Pauline Hanson is not running in this election and their local candidate out here (Mr Savage) is not from this area.”

Cr McDonald said while Mr Savage had lived in Beaudesert, until recently he lived near Bli Bli on the Sunshine Coast.

Mr McDonald disagreed Lockyer was a bellwether seat for One Nation. He said it was an LNP seat to be retained.

“I don’t think it is a bellwether seat. You know the LNP are about winning government in their own right," he said.

"And I believe that will happen."

One Nation's 29-year-old Brad Trussell (right) has worked in an underground uranium mine and is confident of tackling Labor's Jim Madden in Ipswich West.

Further west is the electorate of Ipswich West, where One Nation's candidate is 29-year old Brad Trussell, quite possibly Queensland's only political candidate to have dug tunnels in an underground uranium mine.

“When I was 18 I left here and went down to South Australia," Mr Trussell said.

“I worked on a big subdivision on the Yorke Peninsula, for a while.

“And then I went and spent two years working underground at the BHP-Billiton mine at Olympic Dam in far north South Australia," he said.

“I was an offside on the development rigs underground.

“That meant I was digging the tunnels underground.”

Mr Trussell is a welder by trade and thinks he has a chance of winning the Labor-held seat, which has recently shifted from One Nation to Labor to the LNP and back to Labor.

Mr Trussell said he was now back working as a welder and his youth helped connect with younger people.

“I think I appeal to the younger voter and to the working class at the same time, because of my age. And what I do."

Mr Trussell has the enthusiasm of a new candidate and said only "one in 100 people" snickered at him when he knocked on doors.

In Ipswich West in 2015, the LNP’s Sean Choat won 35 per cent of first-preference votes, while One Nation’s Christopher Reynolds took 10 per cent of the vote.

Labor's Jim Madden won the seat easily and has a 9 per cent margin.

However in 2017, with Ms Hanson actively promoting the party, one has to imagine the One Nation vote will be larger in Ipswich West, which is also being contested by Mr Madden and the LNP's Anna O'Neill.